How To Rotate A Text Box in Aperture’s Book Layout

The book tool in Aperture can also be used as an excellent notecard layout tool. In order to add your contact or other information to the back of the card, you will need to create a new text box and rotate it 180 degrees.

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Here are the steps for rotating the text box:

1. Select the text box in the “Edit Layout” mode.
2. Be sure that the Layout Inspector is open (see the “gear” menu).
3. Change the angle in the “Size and Position” brick of the Layout Inspector from 0 to 180 degrees.

Happy Printing!

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Brush in Desaturation using Aperture 3

Some of the most powerful tools in Aperture 3 are the brushes in the individual adjustment bricks. Here is an example of how selective desaturation can be used to eliminate, or at least tone down, harsh shadows in an image.

1. The original RAW image with obvious shadows on the white robes.

1. 2. The shadows can be selectively removed by opening the “Enhance” brick in Aperture, pulling the Saturation slider to the left until the shadows blend in. You will see that the entire image becomes desaturated; however, the image will reset once you choose “Brush Enhance in” from the gear dropdown menu.

1. 3. Adjust the brush to the proper size and paint over the dark brown shadows to selectively desaturate these areas.

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Want to learn Aperture?

Read Aperture 2 by Ben Long, Richard Harrison, and Orlando Luna.

I’m working through this Apple Pro Training Series guide for the second time and I am still picking up new tips and tricks. The book is very well written and provides plenty of real life examples to help you understand how and when to use the powerful image management and enhancement tools included in Aperture. The book also comes with a DVD containing the images used in the text as well as lessons that provide over 20 hours of training. After completing the book you can, if you are so inclined, become Apple Pro certified by taking the Aperture certification exam at an Apple training center.

If you want to take full advantage of Aperture 2, this is the guide to follow.

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Oops! Another Reason to Shoot in RAW

As the volunteer bench coach, score keeper, and self-appointed photographer for my son’s little league team, I’m flirting with photographic disaster. Last week, I followed my usual routine – balancing camera on scorebook for 6 innings and shooting whenever possible. However, as I began to download the day’s images into my Aperture library, I quickly realized that sometime during the first inning I had inadvertently bumped the control dial on my 40D causing a switch from aperture priority to manual exposure. Almost all of the subsequent images were grossly overexposed. I know what you are thinking – I should have noticed this immediately while reviewing the images on the camera’s LCD…oops!

Rather than send the images to the digital graveyard, I decided to experiment with Aperture and Photoshop to see how much information could be salvaged. After adjusting the exposure and levels in Aperture, I used the Recovery and Highlight sliders to bring some detail back into the image. I then opened each image in Photoshop Elements (using Aperture’s roundtrip feature) and duplicated the background layer twice. The first duplicate layer was converted to black and white and the second duplicate layer was changed to either a Multiply, Color Burn, or Linear Burn blend mode. Here is an example of the results:

While this is not destined for the cover of SI, it does have an interesting pop art feel and it demonstrates the incredible amount of information that is stored in your RAW files.

RAW, Aperture, digital processing

Technorati Tags: RAW, Aperture, digital processing

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Digital Film Tools – Light!

Here’s another nifty Aperture plug-in to check out. Light! from Digital Film Tools is useful for adding light and shadows to images. The plug-in is pretty straightforward and is capable of producing some cool effects. Here are a couple of examples:

RAW FILE

Aperture/PS Elements

DFT Light!

RAW FILE

APERTURE/PS ELEMENTS/DFT LIGHT!

Technorati Tags: Aperture, DFT LIght, plug-in, Photoshop Elements

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